Turkey vs Ukraine Predictions

This Tuesday’s international friendly in Antalya sees two sides who have finished their Nations League campaigns meet. It will be a chance for both sides to experiment a little ahead of the Euro 2020 qualifiers which commence in March. Both sides will have high hopes of reaching the tournament although neither were impressive in their most recent outing.

Ukraine were hammered 4-1 in Slovakia last week. However they had already won their UEFA Nations League group having won all three fixtures prior to that to ensure they will be playing in the top tier of the competition in the next cycle. That will also give them a potential backdoor into Euro 2020 so overall things are looking fairly positive for Ukraine right now despite last week’s heavy defeat.

If Turkey are going to progress to the European Championship they will have to do it the traditional way though. They suffered a 1-0 home defeat to Sweden on Saturday to see them relegated to the third tier of the Nations League. They had actually beaten the Swedes 3-2 away earlier in the group so it was a bitterly disappointing result although they were already out of the running in terms of winning the group.

Both sides are likely to experiment a bit here and certainly in the case of Turkey, they seem very much to be in a rebuilding process as they try to establish their strongest eleven ahead of the next round of competitive fixtures. The hosts are the clear favourites here but their recent international record isn’t a convincing one by any means. They’ve won only 3 of their last 14 internationals overall and they’ve not scored in any of their last 3. 21 year old forward Enes Ünal is likely to get a start here but he is yet to really grab his chance at this level with 0 goals in 10 matches so far for his country.

Ukraine also have a bit of a striker problem. They have 3 forwards in this squad with a grand total of 5 international caps and 0 goals between them. They should learn a thing or two working under Andriy Shevchenko but it’s questionable whether any of them are good enough yet to thrive at this level.  Ukraine have largely been reliant on Andriy Yarmolenko for goals and inspiration in more recent times but the West Ham man is injured here and his absence will certainly be missed. Otherwise Yevhen Konoplyanka is the only man in this squad with more than 3 international goals and even he might be rested here which could leave this Ukraine side lacking many attacking options.

Overall backing Under 2.5 Goals could be worth a punt with both sides looking short on genuine options in the final third.